Publishing DWFs for AutoCAD Plant 3D and Hiding Properties

I’ve been playing around with BIM 360 and looking at some various options for accessing metadata. I had forgotten that you can’t just plot to DWF if you want metadata (line size, spec etc). You have to use the PUBLISH command to get the information out. Having to use the PUBLISH command is actually a limitation of the AutoCAD api that deals with plotting/publishing DWFs. The plot api doesn’t have raise any want to add more information to individual objects. You can read up on enriching DWFS here: Enriching DWFs

During my review of the publish process, I poked around into some settings I haven’t reviewed for a while, and thought it’d be worth mentioning. The settings that I either missed or forgotten control the properties that get published to DWF. Here’s how you can access them. The general idea is that you can protect sensitive fields (maybe pricing information) that you have, and prevent external users from seeing the information. We have worked with some teams that do their bid process intelligently and they can generate an equipment list with pricing as part of their bid package so protecting that information from a competitor would be valuable.

To access the settings, launch the Publish command (1), click on the browse button for P&ID information, and you can check which properties get output.